Media is a multidimensional vocation broadly differentiated on grounds of either content (News or Non-news) or Technology (Print, Electronic or Digital). Not very long ago even media ownership could have been differentiated and defined using similar yardsticks. So, we could easily spot and identify a company as the one which publishes newspapers or say a company which makes fiction shows for television or a dot com company and so on. However, the last decade has seen a complete transformation in the way media companies are launching and/or acquiring media brands and products. So, clearly while the number of media products and outlets are growing at a rapid rate the number of corporations that own and control these media products is shrinking. Electronic media has opened up another layer of distribution of content in the chain of media business, which has seen a number of non media companies become extended part of media business. In the last few years, India has also witnessed a number of political parties and politicians getting into either direct content creation or distribution of content or both. Even the Ministry of Information and the regulator for private satellite channels TRAI has expressed concern over this. A lot of consultation papers have been created asking for a check on the level of cross media ownership and vertical integration in media in the last 4–5 years but it could not be achieved. Thus the ownership pattern of news media in India can be best characterized by lack of regulations and transparency. The opaqueness of media ownership patterns in India has created a lot of scope and need for research in this area which till now by and large remains untouched. What makes the area even more challenging is the lack of data available.
